Government announcing details of first leg of high-speed rail project
Hello there, I’m Peter Zimonjic, a senior writer in CBC’s Parliamentary Bureau where we are watching today’s high-speed rail announcement.
As reporting from Radio-Canada has revealed today, the first section of the network to be built between Quebec and Toronto will link Ottawa and Montreal.
That would be a fantastic achievement for commuters and business travellers in both cities if, of course, ground is broken by 2029, as the government’s plan suggests. Past experiences with transit projects suggest it could take much longer than that.
In Canada, there is a long history of proposing, studying and announcing possible high-speed rail links in the Windsor to Quebec City corridor. Yet Canada remains the only G7 nation without some form of a high-speed rail network.
The question is: will it be different this time? The Liberal government is betting big that it will.
Prime Minister Mark Carney ran for office promising to build big things fast. His government passed legislation to speed up approvals and environmental assessments and streamline how the federal government deals with major projects, but the true test of these initiatives really rests on how long it takes something to get built.
Other major projects may break ground sooner, but if Carney’s government can meet its promises on a project like high-speed rail, it will go a long way to show a government led by him can do things faster and bigger than governments that came before him.
